Here’s How ‘Rogue One’ Nearly Ended, And It’s Drastically Different

Many scenes from Rogue One weren’t in the final cut of the movie due to reshoots, but now we’re getting a better idea of what was changed. Director Gareth Edwards recently revealed how details from the third act (like the scene of the rebels running on a beach) was cut because the third act was dragging. But things could have been even more drastically different: some of them could have survived.

Edwards and writer Gary Whitta have revealed to Entertainment Weekly how the first draft of Rogue One ended and how Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) differed. Erso was going to be a sergeant in the Rebel Alliance, and there’s even a Sgt. Jyn Erso toy based on that earlier draft. Three of the characters — Chirrut Imwe, Baze Malbus, and Bodhi Rook — weren’t in the first version, which would have been a shame. Sassy robot K-2SO was in the original draft, and there was a character similar to Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor.

Most importantly, though, is that Jyn and the early version of Cassian almost survived. Whitta tells Entertainment Weekly they went against their instincts and tacked on a happy ending because they weren’t sure if Disney would let them go that dark:

I thought some (most) of the main character deaths felt forced and contrived. Like they needed to circumvent the “if these characters were all heroes of the Rebellion then where were they later?” argument.